Singapore Judge Dismisses $43M High Profile Bitcoin Case

by ·
December 29, 2017

Recently Singapore had its first high profile legal case involving over 3,000 BTC in a dispute between the UK-based company B2C2 and the local cryptocurrency exchange Quoine. According to the Singapore Commercial Court documents, Judge Simon Thorley has dismissed the plaintiff B2C2’s case for US $43Mn worth of bitcoins.

Just recently news.Bitcoin.com reported on the electronic market maker B2C2 suing the trading platform Quoine for reversing trades. B2C2 says that the Singapore exchange breached the firm’s opportunity to sell the digital assets to financial institutions who trust the company will have “seamless trading settlement” at all times. On April 19 B2C2 tried to sell ethereum (ETH) for bitcoins, but according to them, Quoine had a “technical glitch.” Allegedly the trading platform’s “ETH/BTC quoter” software stopped functioning, and the crypto-liquidity provider was shut out of the deal.

“In consequence, all the orders which were on the ETH/BTC order book ceased to be available, and no true market price could be set,” explains the court document.

However the B2C2 legal team filed the case with the Singapore International Commercial Court and aimed for a ‘summary judgment.’ This means the court can decide on the case based on both sides of the argument without taking the procedure further to trial. Judge Simon Thorley emphasized that the plaintiff’s arguments did not justify a ‘summary judgment.’

“In the present case, I do not consider that the plaintiff’s responses to the defendant’s arguments are sufficient to deny it the right to a trial — The defendant’s case on the mistake itself is a cogent one, and I accept that a more thorough investigation of the facts behind the setting of the abnormally high offer price is justified in order to place the court in a proper position fully to assess the state of the plaintiff’s knowledge,” explains Judge Thorley’s decision.

Equally, after the full facts are established, it will be possible to examine the law on unilateral mistake where computers are involved in greater detail than was possible on an application for summary judgment — For these reasons, I dismiss the plaintiff’s application for summary judgment.

B2C2 has not yet commented on whether it will try to review the case by utilizing a different court procedure. Judge Thorley notes that B2C2 must establish a “prima facie case for judgment” while Quoine needs to provide a “fair or reasonable probability that there’s a real or bona fide defense,” Thorley adds.

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